FEBRUARY 2001

National Engineers Week Preview:
It's Our Turn to Inspire
Tomorrow's Engineers

by Patricia Eng

I remember asking a much older gentleman at a career fair how he became interested in engineering. I had just graduated from the eighth grade and was getting ready to enter high school. I knew that I was eventually going to have to go out and work for a living, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do.

I still remember his answer: "Well, I really enjoyed figuring out how things worked, but most of all I wanted to improve people’s lives, so I went into engineering." That really sounded great. He went on to tell me that the four years I would spend in college would be a challenge, but it would be worth it in the end.

His words of advice were hard to remember when, in my sophomore year in college, I almost flunked Advanced Calculus. But I survived, graduated. went on to obtain my P.E. license, published more than 20 papers, and testified before Congress as an expert witness.

All of us can identify someone who inspired and encouraged us to pursue our engineering careers — sometimes in spite of our own self-image. During National Engineers Week, we have an opportunity to help nurture the next generation of engineers.

For National Engineers Week 2001 (18-24 February), we are launching Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. Our goal is to mobilize as many as 10,000 women and men engineers, to reach one million girls and give them positive messages about the value in learning about math and science. IEEE-USA and the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee have endorsed this effort, and ask you to help us reach this goal. Who knows — by talking to a group of girls about the wonders of math and science you might inspire the next Marie Curie!

Of course, we’ll want to know all about what you did, where and how. Please report your activities for Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day on the form found at www.ieeeusa.org/eweek/form.html by 1 April, so that we can calculate the number of girls that the IEEE reached through the program. IEEE-USA and NSPE will publicly recognize the three IEEE-USA sections that talk to the most girls. Other details on E-Week can be found on the web at www.ieeeusa.org/eweek/.

Patricia L. Eng, P.E., is Technical Assistant to the Director for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Spent Fuel Project Office. She oversees the development and implementation of regulations and programs for transporting and storing commercial spent fuel in the United States. She can be reached at ple@nrc.gov.